CHAPTER XII
At sixty Marshall, Maxwell Fair’s solicitor, found himself a bachelor, a solicitor with an income of twenty thousand pounds and a very decided attachment for his few wealthy clients and an aversion to new ones. Long past the necessity of accepting new clients, Marshall, like so many old Templars, asked for nothing but to be let alone among his books and cronies in the Inner Temple, and allowed to spend his brief holidays at his shooting-box by the Norfolk Broads.
It was with no very good grace, therefore, that he returned to town on that wet Sunday in response to an absurdly urgent telegram from Fair, whose usual business was exactly to old Marshall’s taste, since it consisted of drawing perfunctory documents having to do with real estate, and never involving critical issues of any sort.
But the snug thousands which Fair’s enormous interests brought to him annually made it impolitic to ignore his most uncharacteristic bit of hysterics. Accordingly, after dining in gloomy solitude at his quiet little chop-house, Marshall surprised his laundress by turning up at his chambers in the Inner Temple at nine o’clock on Sunday evening in a crusty temper. Fair would arrive at ten, so Marshall settled down for an hour with Browne’s “Religio Medici,” when to an irritating knock he sang out a curt, “Come in! come in!” and a lady entered.
“Mr. Marshall, I believe?” said the lady.
“Yes, madam,” replied Marshall, rising; “but my business hours—In fact, I am engaged—just leaving, you know—and, besides, I expect a gentleman by appointment at any moment.”
“I venture to think that, whatever his business may be, you will consider my case the one requiring immediate attention,” quietly answered the lady, seating herself, although the old solicitor had not suggested her doing so.
“Case? Case?” exclaimed Marshall. “Why, bless us all, I haven’t taken any new cases in years. Couldn’t think of it, madam.”
“But,” returned the lady vehemently, “a crime has been committed, and I——”
“Crime, you say?” shouted Marshall as if he were being insulted. “Good heavens, my good woman, do you imagine that I am interested in crime?”
“But Mr. Fair has, I think, some claim upon your advice and counsel?” replied the lady, with the assurance of one who trumps an ace.
“Mr. Fair has certainly every claim upon me,” answered Marshall, sitting down and becoming the cautious and alert barrister at once, “and I trust you will appreciate my unwillingness to discuss anything concerning my clients with strangers.”
“Strangers?” cried the woman, with such eagerness that Marshall began to fear all sorts of possible female entanglement. “Why, sir, I am his—I mean, I know Mr. Fair very well.”
“Really, madam,” protested the solicitor, now thoroughly certain that this woman and the urgent telegram were unpleasantly related. “Really, you know, I must beg you will call at some other time. Allow me to see you to your carriage.”
“It will be necessary for you to hear me,” replied the lady firmly. “I see that you do not remember me, but we have met before. You were at Mr. Fair’s place in Norfolk about five years ago. You were presented to Mrs. Maxwell Fair. Well, I am she.”
“Upon my word, dear madam,” exclaimed Marshall, jumping up, “I did, indeed, fail to recognize you. That’s a sign I’m getting old, is it not? This is an honor, really.”
“Alas, sir, I fear that you will think it anything but that,” replied Mrs. Fair nervously. “I desire to state before going into the matter which brought me here that I am not the wife of Mr. Maxwell Fair—Mr. Fair never married. I see that this fills you with amazement—pray, don’t misjudge him. Believe me, Mr. Fair deserves your deepest regard and admiration. My children are not his children. He has been a father, a brother, a chivalrous protector—that is all.”
“But, my dear madam, this is quite beyond belief,” stammered the solicitor.
“It is the truth, as you will learn presently from him. I came here simply to tell you that, whatever Mr. Fair may say, my crime does not involve him, as it would of course do if I were his wife. Now for my story.”
“I must remind you, Mrs. Fair,” interrupted Marshall sternly, “that if your crime, as you choose to call it, is to the prejudice to Mr. Fair, I must decline to hear your statement, as, in the event of any issue arising, I must, of course, act on his and not on your behalf.”
“But it is not a question as between Mr. Fair and me,” answered Mrs. Fair. “The simple and horrible fact is I killed a man yesterday—a Cuban named Pablo Mendes—a wretch who had blasted my life. He dared to pursue me even into my protector’s house. He heaped the foulest insults upon Mr. Fair and the children and me—so, in a mad access of frenzy and horror, I shot and instantly killed him. I desire to give myself up to the police. What shall I do, sir?”
Marshall was walking up and down now with his hands clasped behind his back, and for several moments he did not answer. Then he said as he stood confronting her: “If there were no witnesses, and the man can be proved to have been your traducer and persecutor, it would not be difficult to set up a powerful defense. He invaded your house, demanded money, threatened you—or, wait, wait—I have it! On failing to extort the money, he attacked you, and you, having anticipated just such an assault, had taken the precaution to be armed—and shot him down for the blackguard he was. Why, my dear Mrs. Fair, a jury would acquit you without leaving the courtroom.”
“Ah, but the facts are not as you state them,” cried Mrs. Fair, rising and grasping the old man’s hand feverishly. “There was no attack. And, oh, sir, I did it! I did it! I say I! Take me to the police—and make them believe that it was I—or—or—well, I can’t tell you now, but unless you make them believe me, something most horrible will occur. Do this—do this, Mr. Marshall, for God’s sake.”
“But we must consider this from every side,” replied Marshall, getting Mrs. Fair into a seat again and continuing his walk. “Give me a little time to think it out. Could you manage to return early in the morning? You are evidently very ill. Rest will refresh you—and, moreover, nothing can be done wisely tonight.”
“Very well—but tell me that you believe me—tell me that,” implored Mrs. Fair, rising to go. She was indeed nearly at the end.
“Of course I must accept your statement,” answered Marshall with much gentleness. “Yet it by no means follows that the consequences need be what you apprehend. Allow me to show you down to your carriage.”
“Here is my statement,” she said as she placed a document on the table and took the arm which the old solicitor offered her. “Act upon it, sir—it is a woman’s last story—written in her blood and that of her children. Act upon it, sir, act upon it—no matter what Mr. Fair says.”
“I promise nothing, madam,” replied Marshall, leading her to the door. “You are in no condition to take the best or the wisest view of this most incredible affair. Depend upon it, I shall act only for your best interest and that of Mr. Fair. Come.”
He led her down to the street and, after seeing her safely to her carriage, slowly retraced his steps into the quiet precincts of the Temple. When about to enter the door at the foot of his worn stairs, two men came walking quickly from the thoroughfare without, and one of them, recognizing him, said: “This is my friend Allyne—Lord Linklater’s son, you know, Mr. Marshall. May we have a few minutes of your time?—very urgent matter!”
“Travers?” said Marshall as he caught sight of his face under the gas lamp. “What on earth brings you to this old graveyard at this time? I know your honored father, Lord Linklater, Mr. Allyne. Come up, gentlemen.”
Once more the solicitor entertained no very pleasant conjectures as to the purpose of his visitors, whom he knew to be close personal friends of Maxwell Fair’s. The whole departure was as upsetting as it was sudden.
“Rather a beastly time to intrude upon you, Mr. Marshall,” said Travers apologetically as they seated themselves in Marshall’s library.
“And on the beastliest sort of business,” put in Allyne.
Mr. Marshall, finding nothing particular to say, remained silent.
“We were asked to come here this evening by Mr. Maxwell Fair,” said Travers, explaining. “He will be here at ten o’clock.”
“Yes?” softly remarked the imperturbable lawyer; “then we will wait.”
“The deuce you say,” protested Allyne in spite of the signal from Travers. “Why, we came ahead of him expressly.”
“Shut up, Allyne,” broke in Travers. “Fair knows that we are here, Mr. Marshall—in fact, we came rather at his suggestion. He gave us full permission to speak to you.”
“I shall, of course, be very glad to hear anything that you may deem it desirable to tell me. Pray proceed,” said Marshall not very eagerly.
“Well, then, sir, it is with the utmost sorrow that we have to tell you that we are convinced poor Fair has become suddenly insane on a certain dreadful subject,” went on Travers, irritated by Marshall’s manner.
“Ah, there we shall have to move very slowly—very—slowly,” said Marshall when Travers stopped. “Mr. Fair is thought to be of unsound mind on a number of subjects by a number of persons. He is so successful, you know—so original, that others who are merely British fail to understand him. Moreover, Fair is unselfish, sympathetic, altruistic—and of course appears mad to our smug, hoggish world.”
“Damn it,” exclaimed Allyne, “that’s all, as you say, but the dear fellow has gone clean off his head this time, you know. You just wait until Travers gives you the details.”
“I am waiting,” answered Marshall calmly.
“Before we come to that,” said Travers in answer to Marshall’s look, “I believe, Mr. Marshall, that you knew Fair’s father, did you not?”
“Intimately—and his grandfather also. What of them?”
“What sort were they?”
“Very much like Fair—both were thought mad.”
“In what way? They were men of tremendous will power and fixity of purpose, were they not? I have reason for asking.”
“Quite so. They were idealists, dreamers, monomaniacs—but why?”
“I thought as much. The stuff martyrs are made of. Tell us about them, if you don’t mind, Mr. Marshall,” said Travers, unaccountably insistent.
“Very well,” began Marshall, really glad to be able thus to kill time until Fair arrived. “His grandfather got it into his head that he was bound in honor to extricate his publishers—he was an author, you know—from their financial difficulties, although it was clearly proved in court that they had only their own speculative folly to thank for their failure. Well, poor old Fair lost his all and even mortgaged the Norfolk estates. In spite of his solicitors, he pressed forward eagerly to ruin, and died perfectly happy in the knowledge that he had lived up to his ideal. Mad—stark mad!”
“By Jove, it sounds like Fair all over again!” exclaimed Allyne.
“Yes,” went on the old lawyer, warming to his favorite work of decrying idealism of every sort. “Yes, gentlemen, and our Mr. Fair’s father was no better than his grandfather. He spent the first half of his life in freeing the estates from their heavy encumbrances—and the second half in throwing away all that he had accumulated in the first. His specialty was young geniuses—any kind of young genius, musical, literary, artistic. Any chap who could not get an editor to print his stuff could count on Fair bringing out an édition de luxe at his own expense. And any young woman had but to get her mother to tell him with tears in her eyes that she had wonderful musical promise and away she would go to Germany to be educated—of course at Fair’s expense. You probably know that he died in lodgings in Mile End, where he had removed in order to live among those whom he, poor old dreamer, imagined would appreciate his sympathy. He left our Mr. Fair nothing but the estates heavily mortgaged again.”
“And Maxwell is a chip of the old block,” commented Travers when the solicitor stopped. “But Mr. Marshall, he has done more than either his father or grandfather in the way of self-effacement. His life is one long tragedy for an idea. That is bad enough. But now he proposes actually to destroy himself for it. Unless we can prevent it, he will die.”
“Good heavens,” cried Marshall, unable to treat the terrible intensity on Travers’s face with his customary calmness. “It’s not quite so bad as that. What, in the name of reason, is the man about now?”
“Listen,” said Travers, glad to have at last roused the stoical man of law from his leathery, noncommittal expression, “Fair declares that he has committed a crime which will send him to the gallows— Why, what ails you?”
Travers stopped and stared at the lawyer, who was strangely delighted by his last few words. Marshall’s acute mind had evidently been scouting.
“Nothing,” replied Marshall, regaining his quiet manner; “I was thinking of a similar case that once came to my notice. Go on.”
“There is no evidence against him, and yet the wretched victim of his own high-flown notions is determined to go ahead to destruction. For God’s sake, sir, help us to prevent this, even by placing him in a madhouse.” Travers saw that his words touched the old man, but that professional caution and habitual reserve were restraining him from avowing his purpose, whatever it might be.
This angered Allyne, who broke in with the sneering comment: “The law keeps no end of rascals from getting their richly deserved medicine. I think it’s a jolly beastly outrage if it can’t prevent an innocent man from hanging himself.”
“The ways of the law,” answered Marshall, with cold judicial accent, “the ways of the law, Mr. Allyne, are not as our ways. The law proceeds without sentiment or bias, and must go straight to its object in the light of fact.”
“But, I tell you, the facts can’t be as Fair states them to be, don’t you know,” retorted Allyne hotly, galled by the lawyer’s coolness and formality.
“Then Mr. Fair has nothing to fear,” quietly replied Marshall. “It is ten o’clock. Fair is a punctual man—he will be here immediately. Suppose that we allow him to explain himself.”
“I’ll be hanged if I will let him go too far. Why, gentlemen, this is monstrous! Do you mean to say, Marshall, that you——?”
A knock interrupted Allyne, and immediately Fair came in, looking not at all as though he could possibly be the subject of his friend’s anxiety.
“I’m awfully sorry,” Fair began, “to learn from your laundress, Marshall, that my telegram brought you back to town from the country. I promise you it won’t happen again.”
“Nonsense,” returned Marshall, studying Fair closely, “I was only too glad of an excuse to come back to town. You know, we old Templars don’t enjoy the country—been caged here too long for that. Sit down, dear fellow. What can I get up for you—sherry?”
“Thanks, nothing for me. Perhaps the others——”
“Lord, no!” roared Allyne before Marshall could ask.
“Well, then, to the point,” said Fair, seating himself calmly and lighting a cigar with the air of a director of a company about to discuss the treasurer’s report. “Travers has told you, Marshall?”
“Nothing,” answered the solicitor. “We were discussing peculiarities of temperament. I was just telling your friends what people used to say of your father. You know, we are all mad on some subject.”
“I see,” replied Fair, smiling. “Allyne has mentioned madness and madhouses, I should say, about once every five minutes all day long.”
“Yes, and we mean it,” thundered Allyne. “At it now. This is rum.”
“I can put the facts before you in a word, Marshall,” said Fair.
“Do so. I am all attention,” returned the lawyer, settling back into his chair with a puzzling look, in which there was certainly a trace of amusement not easily explained.
“Some Cuban gentlemen have been extorting blackmail from certain aristocratic families,” went on Fair in a monotone, “and they had, without my knowledge, frightened Mrs. Fair into paying them considerable sums. The leader of the gang, one Pablo Mendes, came to my house yesterday, and finding him in the library with Mrs. Fair I killed him.”
“Proceed,” said Marshall when Fair paused to note the effect of his announcement, speaking with so much coolness that Fair jumped up and went on fiercely: “I tell you, I shot him down like a dog—murdered him in cold blood. The servants heard the report of the pistol. Travers came in a moment after the shooting and saw the pistol still warm. I hid the man’s body in a chest in the library, from which it was taken by somebody today—so any effort on my part to delay the hand of justice would be ridiculous. What shall I do?”
“Nothing!” exclaimed Marshall. Then he added, as if regretting the unguarded word: “That is, I can’t advise you until I know more. Go on.”
“That’s the game, Marshall,” put in Allyne, pleased by the lawyer’s manifest incredulity. “Fair, you idiot, do you fancy that everybody has gone off his head just because you have?”
“Oh, please, Mr. Allyne,” said Marshall deprecatingly.
“You take this rather coolly, I must say, Marshall,” remarked Fair when Travers had succeeded in pushing Allyne into a chair.
“I find coolness conducive to clear thinking,” replied Marshall.
“Well, then, I have nothing further to say. I have murdered a man. I have neither the heart nor the wish to set up a defense. Were I to clear myself by technicalities, it would become the duty of the police to try to establish the guilt of someone else. Would you have me sit by quietly, while they drew the net of skilfully devised circumstantial evidence around some innocent person? And to whom else could suspicion point? My servants—or, God help her, the woman who is known as my wife, and who is the noblest soul I ever met? If you cannot meet my arguments, I shall go at once to the police and surrender myself.”
“There will be plenty of time for all that,” replied Marshall, showing so little feeling that Allyne was on the point of breaking out again. “The police would not believe your story, I fear. You see, my dear fellow, your case is by no means unique. Only a very little while ago one very much like it was brought to my attention. A murder—or at all events, a death, had occurred. Suspicion pointed strongly to one of two persons—a gentleman of eccentric character, and the woman whom he had loved in early youth. Now mark the dramatic interest. Each of them confessed the crime to save the other, but, of course, as they both could not have been guilty, the court refused to entertain the charge against either. There was no evidence except the bogus confession of the two. I mention this case only to show you that too hasty action on your part now may spoil everything—and you may not be allowed the luxury of hanging.”
“But, Marshall,” said Fair, “the cases are not even remotely similar. Others will testify that I had the most powerful motives for my crime, and, unless I should be dastard enough to lie, nobody else can be suspected. Lopez knows that Mendes was my enemy. Janet knows that I was in the room when the murder was done. Travers knows that a pistol, which he identified as mine, had been discharged a few minutes before he saw me—at the very time that the servants heard the report in the library. Moreover, somebody discovered the body of my victim where I had hid it. On top of all this I confess the awful fact. What more can the law possibly require? You believe what I tell you, do you not?”
“Not one word of it!” fairly cried Marshall.
“Marshall,” Fair replied with terrible earnestness, “you say you doubt my word. Such a statement must be explained.”
“Certainly,” returned Marshall, now thoroughly in control of his feelings. “I will explain. I doubt your story because of its inherent improbability. Further, I doubt it because I knew your father, because I know yourself, and am aware that not even a shameful death on the gibbet could deter you from any purpose which you had come to think your destiny. Again, I doubt it because I know who the real murderer of Mendes is.”
The three men who heard these last slow, calm words sprang to their feet together, Fair quivering with a nameless horror, and his two friends delirious with joy.
Fair steadied himself against the lawyer’s table and said: “Marshall, this is not the time when you can play with me. I tell you to your face, that when you say that you know who the murderer is, you lie.”
The old man showed how deeply the insult cut into him, and facing the young man with his own face as white as Fair’s, he retorted: “Your father’s son can go very far with me, but no man can give me the lie. Recall that word, Fair.”
Travers looked imploringly at Fair as he replied.
“I do recall it—and beg your pardon,” said Fair eagerly. “I also demand an explanation of your singular conduct.”
“If you will all sit down,” replied the solicitor, “I will prove that I am right. But before I do so I want to say that in all my life I never heard of such sublime devotion, such utterly disinterested heroism. Gentlemen, nothing will ever be more of an honor to us than to be called the friends of Maxwell Fair.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted Allyne, but Travers said quietly to Marshall: “I fear this is scarcely kind of you just now—look at his face.”
The old lawyer looked at Fair, and going over to him grasped his hand.
“Forgive me, boy,” he said, “but I meant each word. To end this dreadful business I have merely to state that the unhappy creature who sent the scoundrel to his doom came here not an hour ago and made a full confession.”
“And on my honor I swear that every word she said was false,” said Fair.
“You, at least, believe me?” asked Marshall, turning to Travers.
“Most assuredly,” replied Travers.
Fair wheeled round at him, saying: “My God, are you men English gentlemen and going to allow an innocent woman to be hanged in order to save me?”
“I seem to hear your father speak in you,” remarked Marshall, “yet there is this difference, Fair. He would have died for a great purpose, but never for a lie or to defeat the ends of justice.”
Fair winced at this, and Travers said: “That’s the line, Marshall.”
“Not a word he has said can move me,” went on Fair, rising. “I want no man’s forced friendship. I have decided on a course. You choose to allow me to pursue it alone. Good-bye.”
He spoke with such feeling, and moved toward the door with so much majesty, that none of them attempted to stop him.
Before he reached the door it was opened and a closely cropped head appeared, and a soft, insinuating cockney voice said: “Beg pardon, I’m sure. Ferret, gentlemen; Ferret, of Scotland Yard.”
“You see, Marshall, others are not as incredulous as you. I am the man you want, Mr. Ferret,” said Fair as the detective came in and sat down.
“I’ll attend to you, sir, in a minute,” replied Ferret jauntily. “Perhaps these gentlemen will try a cigar in the gardens for a few minutes.”
“Oh, never mind them,” quickly returned Fair; “they know all. Proceed.”
“But you see, sir, they don’t know all,” replied Ferret.
“I think, Fair, that we would better let this man speak to you alone,” said Marshall, rising.
Ferret interposed: “I shall ask you to stop, if you don’t mind, Mr. Marshall.”
“As you like,” answered Marshall.
Travers and Allyne went downstairs after shaking Fair’s hand with very much mixed feelings.
Marshall and Fair turned to Ferret when the door was closed, and Fair said sternly: “I see that you have been rather impudently examining that sworn statement on the table there. It will save time if I tell you that it is false. The lady wrote it under a nervous strain. It is totally false.”
“Sure. It’s just as false as your own statement, Mr. Fair,” replied Ferret, winking knowingly at the solicitor, who failed to appreciate the fellow’s humor and resented his apparently unconscionable impertinence.
“What the devil do you mean?” asked Marshall angrily, yet with relief.
“I mean,” answered the cool one, “that, thanks to my little chum, it now becomes my painful duty to admit that I suspected Mr. Fair until about two hours ago. I now know that Mrs. Fair’s statement is false—and likewise Mr. Fair’s also. It’s the other gent’s statement that is the true one.”
“The other gentleman’s statement?” asked Fair fiercely. “Why, man, there was no other man in the room when the shot was fired.”
“Oh, I say, come now, Mr. Fair,” smilingly protested Ferret. “The gent as fired the shot was there, you know. You see, Mr. Marshall, it was this way. Mendes had threatened Mrs. Fair, and she went out and got the pistol, and at that moment Mr. Fair came into the room. Mendes shot himself, and Mr. Fair, hearing the shot and seeing the smoking pistol in Mrs. Fair’s hand, snatched it away from her and declared that it was he and not her that did the killing. She came here tonight and swore it was her, and now he comes and swears it was him. But Mendes swore just as he was dying that it was himself—and the priest will testify to that.”
“But, my heavens, man, Mendes died at once. I hid his body in——”
“In the chest,” interrupted the detective, grinning. “Yes, I know all about that. But, you see, Mendes did not die. He came to while you were at dinner. Our fellows followed him to his lodgings in Soho—and today my chum got hold of a letter that gave her the address, and she and I were with him when he died an hour ago—yes, and Mrs. Fair is there now.”
While he was speaking Fair sank back into his chair, as if unconscious of what was passing, but when Ferret paused he sprang up, crying, “Marshall, did you ever hear of anything so unspeakably glorious as Janet’s devotion?”
“Yes—once,” answered Marshall, with streaming eyes. “Your own, Fair.”
“But, Ferret,” went on Fair, when he had recovered his voice, “who is the chum who so materially assisted you? And where is Mrs. Fair now?”
“Mrs. Fair is by Mendes’s bedside. My chum is——”
The door opened and Kate Mettleby came hurrying in, breathless and worn. Ferret finished by saying: “My chum, gentlemen.”
“Oh, Mr. Fair,” began Kate, after Fair had presented Marshall to her with a word of explanation, “have you heard? Janet is with him—with Señor Mendes—it was awful—it was unbearably touching.”
“He is the father of her children, Kate,” said Fair gently, when Marshall and Ferret quietly stole out, leaving them together.
“Yes, I know—and—Maxwell—there is something—oh, how can I tell you? She came in and knelt by his bed with his head in her arms when the priest told her that he was dead. She knelt there half an hour, and when it was time for us to start to come here to meet you—Maxwell, can you bear it?—when I went and touched her shoulder and told her to come away—she—was dead.”
Kate’s head fell upon her folded arms on the table and her body shook with the strain of the awful day’s events. Fair suffered her to cry herself into a quieter state. Then he stooped and laying his hand on her head, he said: “Kate, the children have no mother now.”
THE END
All Gain
TAPESON—How much did he make out of that stock company he formed?
Tickerly—All that was put into it.